The Great CAGW Debate

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_Res Ipsa
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Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Water Dog wrote:
Res Ipsa wrote:Now, the thread went on for five more pages. Dog's response? Crickets.

Open invitation: Show the data and the computation for a 17-year cooling trend.

More dishonesty. Again, RI, I'm not sure who you are "presenting" to? Is there some audience out there I'm unaware of? I didn't respond to this because YOU acted the part of the scoundrel by disingenuously accusing me of lying before there was a chance for me to respond. Then the thread took a whole different direction. A direction in which YOU took it. Which is something you know... which makes this entire post disingenuous... which makes it a lie... which makes you a liar.

I start this new thread, attempting to reset. In which I suggested starting from the basics, from scratch. I said, "Round 1 - Are there warming trends? Let's examine whether warming exists or not." Your response to all this is to continue acting the part of the scoundrel. But then when I say "peace out," suddenly you want to talk about science, as if I'm the one that ducked that conversation. SMH.

Dude, I'm just not going to play these games.

If you want to talk about cooling trends, cool, I'm happy to get into all that. But I'm not going to play these games with you, which is what you're doing right now. I am not going to spend a whole bunch of time looking up data, reading the science, formulating an argument, typing it up, only to have you and your gang of prison bitches mock me. That just isn't reasonable. I'm not going to expend that kind of effort for a discussion that isn't going to happen in good faith.

Image


So let's get back to this whole "17 year cooling trend." Actually, WD doesn't have to do any work at all. Because I know how to create a 17 year cooling trend from the data. Just follow these three simple steps:

1. Cherry pick one of several available data sets of temperatures (one that, by the way, doesn't measure surface temperature)
2. Cherry pick a start and a stop date.
3. Pick a period short enough that the cooling trend isn't statistically significant.

That's all you have to do. And it's exactly what the deniers do. But statistician Grant Foster explains it much better than I can. Please read the link: it's totally worth seeing examples of how the deniers manipulate the data.

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/12/07 ... 3-tactics/

ETA: Foster's quote from Neil de Grasse Tyson is key:

A skeptic will question claims, then embrace the evidence. A denier will question claims, then reject the evidence.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Jersey Girl
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Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Jersey Girl »

RI if you have time and interest, might I suggest that you take this post of WD's

viewtopic.php?p=1150169#p1150169

take his statements on this very thread and contrast and compare the crap out of that stuff?

The projection is strong with this one.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
_Res Ipsa
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Posts: 10274
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:37 pm

Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Jersey Girl wrote:RI if you have time and interest, might I suggest that you take this post of Water Dog's

viewtopic.php?p=1150169#p1150169

take his statements on this very thread and contrast and compare the ____ out of that stuff?

The projection is strong with this one.


That's kind of what I was trying to do in this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=50201&start=21#p1150218

Or do you mean more like quote from that post and then quote from other posts in the thread where WD does the same thing?
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Jersey Girl
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Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Jersey Girl »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Jersey Girl wrote:RI if you have time and interest, might I suggest that you take this post of Water Dog's

viewtopic.php?p=1150169#p1150169

take his statements on this very thread and contrast and compare the ____ out of that stuff?

The projection is strong with this one.


That's kind of what I was trying to do in this post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=50201&start=21#p1150218

Or do you mean more like quote from that post and then quote from other posts in the thread where WD does the same thing?


I was mainly thinking about his items 1 and 2. I know you covered them both in your above linked post, however, I do think (See how I'm bossing you around? Write that down it might come in handy one day.) you could have taken say item 2 and listed the littany of ad hom's he pumped out during the thread.

And finally, how he ends up using what he apparently thinks of as the big guns of insults and calls you a cunt (which he's called me previously, twice) as his last hurrah before picking up the toys he's thrown around and heads for home.

Something like that.

You may have done more justice to this than I realized. I might not be attending well right now.

But...it's amazing to watch this behavior repeat itself over and over and over again here and on other threads.

Someone calls him on his BS, he's cornered, so he starts lobbing insults and prevaricating likely in the hopes of creating a diversion until he projectile projects all over the screen and then beats it the hell out of a thread.

Would it be too extreme to call him a giant chicken crap? Because I rather like it so I'll just leave it stand as that.

Does this post seem a bit wordy? I'm serious. I doubt that I'm in a position to hold my own right now but you all know me, I'll sure as heck get a running start and jump in anyway.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
_Res Ipsa
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Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:37 pm

Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Jersey Girl, I'm the last person who would ever have standing to call someone else's post wordy. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah, I think we all fall into projecting from time to time. But the sheer volume with WD is just nuts. I mean, it is typical denier behavior, but he's way over the top.

I'm pretty sure you pay more attention to patterns in posters than I do. I didn't really start to see all the patterns until I really pressed him on the global warming issue.

I'm not sure that "giant chicken crap" quite captures him, but I'm not sure exactly what does. He's smart enough to do just fine in these climate discussions if I didn't reject the vast bulk of scientific evidence because it's tainted by the UN. As it stands now, he says something idiotic. Then, rather than just falling on his sword like we all have to do from time to time, he doubles down and tries to bluff his way through. And he gets it horribly wrong every time because he hasn't bothered to even try and learn the basics.

Hope you're feeling better soon, and return to your usual fine Jersey form.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_Res Ipsa
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Posts: 10274
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2012 11:37 pm

Re: The Great CAGW Debate

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Climate change denial is a phenomenon that has been studied. https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10305 Studies have traced its origin to a few individuals and conservative think thanks that disseminated it into the public at large. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787818/

Folks have also studied the way climate deniers argue, finding that their tactics fall into several categories:

The 5 characteristics
Whether the topic is climate change, lung cancer’s link to smoking, vaccines & autism, AIDS or MSG, denial of scientific findings relies on a set of techniques that can be summed up by the acronym FLICC:



Fake experts: climate science is huge and complex field, as you can see from IPCC reports that need 4,000 pages merely to summarize the state of the field. No expert knows everything about it, as the field has numerous specializations. While many articles on denial blogs are written by “scientists” (such as computer scientists or geologists), most articles are not written by contrarian climate scientists, and contrarians themselves are not experts in most of the subspecialties they criticize. Pseudo-skeptics trust people with little or no credentials in the field, and may even think they themselves are experts after reading a pseudo-skeptic book or two. So when TV networks put Bill Nye on the screen to face off against an AGW pseudo-skeptic, other pseudo-skeptics may point out that Bill Nye is not a climate scientist — while cheering on the other guy, who is not a climate scientist either.

Magnified Minority: Though 3% of experienced climate scientists disagree with the consensus, media often give pseudo-skeptics 50% screen time. There is another small minority of scientists, and perhaps the occasional climatologist, who believe there will be much more warming than typically thought — we might call these “alarmists”. But some media treats the consensus position itself as “alarmist”, so instead of pitting “contrarians” against “alarmists”, it’s “contrarians” versus “mainstream scientists whom we call alarmists to discredit them”.

Logical fallacies: Most pseudo-skeptic beliefs are based on logical errors and/or an absence of knowledge and context. Most myths about climate change can be described in terms of a few fallacies (see below).

Impossible expectations: demanding more precision and more perfect information than climate science can realistically deliver. For example, J.S. Sawyer estimated in 1972 that by the year 2000, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise about 25% compared to 1969 and that global temperatures would rise 0.6°C. Temperatures did in fact rise slightly more than 0.6°C by the time CO2 rose 25%, but it took until after 2010 for this to happen; I assume this is because early estimates of the rate at which carbon sinks (oceans and vegetation) absorb CO2 were too low. Most people would see this as a remarkably accurate prediction, especially since the temperature record in 1972 showed no hints that temperatures were about to rise. Pseudo-skeptics, however, seize upon the imperfection of the prediction as ‘another example’ of why we can’t trust climate science. Similarly, the 1995 IPCC projections (unlike the 1990 and 2000 ones) substantially underestimated the amount of warming that would occur by 2016. Upon learning this, a pseudo-skeptic I spoke with saw it as more evidence of bad science. (“so you’d disagree with anyone who calls the IPCC alarmist?” I asked. “Alarmists don’t underestimate.” He ignored the question.)

Cherry picking: cherry picking is another logical fallacy, but pseudo-skeptics tend to use it far more than the others. For example, the pseudo-skeptic says correctly that the antarctic is gaining sea ice, that one study (controversially) says it’s gaining land ice, and that specific parts of Greenland are gaining ice. But they avoid the bigger picture: the water around Antarctica has warmed up, it may be losing land ice, the arctic is quickly losing ice, Greenland as a whole has been losing ice at an accelerating pace for about 13 years, and far more glaciers are losing ice than gaining ice. They also cherry-pick predictions from individualclimatologists that turned out to be inaccurate, while ignoring predictions from contrarians that were more wrong (past contrarians predicted imminent cooling. Since that didn’t happen, remaining contrarians tend to imply it’s impossible to predict climate — a concept that will allow denial to continue forever, no matter what happens).

Conspiracy theories: last but not least, pseudo-skeptics need a way to explain why most climate scientists came to the “wrong” conclusion, so conspiratorial thinking fills in the blanks. I’ve seen claims of conspiracy or corruption many times, but always with a striking lack of detail. I’ve never encountered a complete story: why it happened, when it happened, who did it (specific people), and how it was pulled off. The best they can do is misunderstand a handful of leaked emails. This makes sense if the idea of conspiracy, or corruption, or a vast global network of incompetent scientists, is all just a backdrop — a curtain hastily installed to cover up the consensus so it can be ignored. But there is another interpretation for this lack of detail. Perhaps the idea of conspiracy or corruption is actually the primary belief held by most pseudo-skeptics, but because there is so little direct evidence for it, pseudo-skeptics are forced to rely on indirect evidence in the form of scientific findings that are “flawed” according to black-belts in FLICC-fu.

“Conspiracy theories turn out to be unusually hard to undermine or dislodge; they have a self-sealing quality, rendering them particularly immune to challenge.” - Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures
“the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered” - Dead and Alive … Contradictory Conspiracy Theories
Here are the main logical fallacies:

Red Herring: a minor detail used to mislead or derail a discussion. For example, pseudo-skeptics may point out that CO2 is a “trace” gas (less than 0.1% atmospheric concentration). They can admit that all plant life would die without CO2, yet claim that a trace gas can’t possibly have a noticeable effect on climate. This is a red herring and an example of the “argument from incredulity”. Of course, there are many examples of small things making a clear difference: microscopic windshield coatings to reduce glare, tiny pits that increase airplane fuel efficiency, fluoride in water. Another example: CO2 dissolved in water is carbonic acid, and causes the ocean’s pH to fall toward the “acid” side of the pH scale. We call this “ocean acidification”. However, ocean water is on the alkaline (non-acid) side of the pH scale, so pseudo-skeptics distract by questioning the intellect of people who use the word “acidification”. In short, if sea horses start dying, it’s okay because they’re not really horses!
Misrepresentation (straw man or half-truth): misstating scientific predictions or findings. For example, pseudo-skeptics may misrepresent the 2nd law of thermodynamics to “prove” that the greenhouse effect can’t be real. Or they pretend that scientists are certain about precisely how much warming CO2 will cause, and then attack a certainty that doesn’t exist. Or they misrepresent how scientists reached their conclusions, to demonstrate a “circular reasoning” that doesn’t exist. Or they quote an erroneous news article that misstated a scientific prediction. They might even find a prediction that says “by 2050” and call it “failed” because it hasn’t happened yet. The list goes on and on.
Jumping to conclusions: when you really want something to be true, it’s easy to ignore details that contradict your conclusion. For instance, the urban heat island effect may raise some temperature readings due to urbanization. Also, satellite records interpreted by UAH show less warming than other records. So they jump to the conclusion that warming has been small. However, almost the same warming can be seen based on rural temperature stations and rural records alone; and weather balloons and high-resolution proxy records also show similar warming. In fact, ocean records are the main factor in global average temperatures, since they make up 71% of Earth’s surface. As for satellites, the same satellite records interpreted by RSS show significantly more warming than UAH. Why? Satellites don’t measure temperature, and the data is very tricky to interpret. Satellites show day-to-day differences reliably, but the readings drift in multiple ways as years and decades pass. Both UAH and RSS have repeatedly changed how they compensate for drift, which in turn changed their temperature trends retroactively.
False dichotomy: incorrectly assuming there are only two possibilities, then showing one of the possibilities is wrong to “prove” the other. The most common false dichotomy is to point out that CO2 lagged temperature before humans started burning fossil fuels.
The 3 Pillars
The “3 Pillars model” views denial from the more strategic perspective of “how can we create denial?”


Use disinformation to show people it’s “bad science”
Claim the bad science is driven by radical ideology and leads to undesirable social consequences (even though conservative climate change solutions exist)
Demand equal time in the media
The three pillars are related to the FLICC model like so:

Logical fallacies / Cherry picking / Impossible expectations
Conspiracy theories
Magnified minority / Fake experts.


Water Dog has given us a treasure trove of examples of denial in action. As time permits, I'll be going through his posts in detail to show how he uses these techniques to paint a false and deceptive picture of climate science.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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